An-Naba · Makki · ayah 35 of 40

An-Naba 78:35

لَّا يَسْمَعُونَ فِيهَا لَغْوًا وَلَا كِذَّٰبًا

“No ill speech will they hear therein or any falsehood -”

Saheeh International

Essence

Part of the Garden's joy is what you will never hear there: empty chatter, lies, or anyone calling you a liar.

A reflection

The calves that did not count

A sound engineer sits with a two-hour recording of a podcast. Her job is to take out what does not count. The ums, the false starts, the chat about the weather, the joke that fell flat. When she has finished, the episode is forty minutes long. Nothing important has been lost.

The root of laghw holds that picture exactly. The lexicons say it is what is not counted. When blood money was paid in camels, the young calves were laghw: they did not count towards the hundred. Speech that is laghw is the same. It adds nothing. It is spoken without thought, like the chattering of birds before dawn. One early lexicographer, quoted by a commentator here, describes it as speech that comes out without reflection, like the twittering of sparrows. These are established senses.

The sources explain the ayah simply. In the Garden they hear no falsehood in speech. One commentator links it to another ayah: in it there is no idle talk and no sin (52:23). The Garden, he says, is the Abode of Peace, and everything in it is free of defect. Another notes that in this world, people who drink together often talk nonsense. The drink of the Garden brings none.

It is a striking way to describe paradise: partly by what is absent. No noise without meaning. No words that have to be edited out afterwards.

Most of our days are full of calves that do not count. We speak and hear a great deal that adds nothing: chatter, filler, complaint and gossip. It is not always sinful. But it takes up the space where something better could have been.

Try, for one conversation today, to say only what counts. You may find, like the engineer, that nothing important is lost.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.